Bits and pieces of information about Hebden Bridge, Calderdale and elsewhere that I personally find interesting, and hope that you might too!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Political Exclusion Zone in place

With the latest news that, following the NUT's example at the recent debate in Todmorden, the Churches Hustings are excluding the independent, Chris O'Connor, UKIP representative, Greg Burrows, and Kate Sweeny, the Green Party candidate, it would now seem that there is a political exclusion zone in place to make sure that no-one votes for any party in the Calder Valley other than the "big three", i.e. to maintain the status quo.

Of course, the majority of the local electorate will vote for either Steph Booth, Hilary Myers or Craig Whittaker. They have the history, the organised and polished policies and the budgets to make sure that, to some degree or other, tribal voting patterns will ensure they retain their deposits.

But what about those people who feel disenfranchised by the current arrangements?

All three candidates actually have messages that strike a chord with a great many people, so why are they left out?

Surely the churches have no political agenda?

All credit to the organisers of the Lightcliffe debate, who did manage to include everyone, but it looks like that may be the only time we get to see them all together.

NB. For those who aren't aware, the original debate I had organised, not only had Kate Sweeny included, but Chris O'Connor had also been invited. At the time Greg Burrows hadn't declared himself as a candidate so, for that reason only, wasn't included.

1 comment:

Rev Robert Bowen
said...

The Churches' meeting is misunderstood! Our meeting on April 14th (Hebden Bridge Meth Church, 7.30pm) will not be a hustings meeting. Rather it is a lobbying meeting.It follows a series of three meetings, backed by Churches Together in Hebden Royd & Todmorden, where we invited speakers to educate us on three issues chosen by members of the churches as key issues. These were "Care of People in Old Age", "World Poverty" and, still to come, "Euthanasia/Assisted Dying" (St Mary’s Todmorden, Wed March 25th 7.30pm).Our meeting in April is to lobby parliamentary candidates on only these three subjects. We will be asking them what their parties will do, and what their own opinions are. As you would with any lobby, you choose whom you wish to lobby, and our criteria was those parties which presently have representation in Westminster.Admittedly the meeting will almost certainly be in an election campaign, so electioneering cannot be avoided, but this is not the main intention of the meeting.After representation was made to us we did reconsider our decision carefully and prayerfully, deciding in the end to stick with our original criteria. We needed a clear criteria for invitation, and we have one. The alternative was all parties, or excluding individual parties we don’t like. Neither of these alternatives would have been acceptable to all our constituent churches, so we decided to stick with our original criteria. The full text of the letter we sent to our constituent churches can be seen at www.uppercaldermethodists.org.uk and following the links to BIG ISSUESWe recognise that our choice of criteria is not acceptable to all our constituent churches, so the April 14th meeting will be in the name of the Upper Calder Methodist Churches.Do we have a political agenda? No! Our desire is to focus on and promote the issues; all are welcome to the meeting, from any party or none.